A Note About This Site

First off, thanks for stopping by this site! It is a sourceof pride for me to know that people find this site useful andworth coming back to!

So you say, ok, Bob, what is the point of this page?

Well, frankly this page serves two purposes:

1) A place for me to offer thanks in public to some people2) A place for me to state the course this site is going to take

The most important part...I want to say that this site is the result of the efforts of many many people. The part that I chose to play in the creation of this site was to put it together in the first place. This site has been up since late 94, I think, and as faras I can recall, there were only 2 web sites at that time to speakof: Christopher Crosby'sweb site and Nathan Cosgray'sweb site. I decided that I wanted to see more than what they were offeringand with a burning desire to see what "authoring for the web" was all about, I beget this beast I call Stiff As Toys....

The goal of this site has always been to take the collective informationof the fan base on the mailing list, at the time Babble, and place itinto a central repository for other fans. Although I do not care too much for the history of the Cure these days, I still remember the firsttime I was really struck by a Cure song (other voices) and how it lead me to want to know more about the mind that created such a song!Hence, the large volume of interviews.

The bootleg thing was always something that I shied away from as a fan.When I was 18 I bought a few bootlegs for an obscene amount of money andthe quality of them was quite dissapointing...thus was born the bootlegreview page. The bootleg section was originally put together by Mike Cheng of Australia, when he no longer had time to do anything with it, I took it on. I am eternally endebted to him for the original list of files he sent and thank very much everyone that has contributed to the bootleg reviews byletting me know new ones exist or adding additional comments. It is my hope that no one other than the most obsessed need purchase a mediocrerecording for an obscene amount of money!.

Which brings me to my real passion, tape trading. The one thing that I spent way too much time on, 'sides drugs, when I was young! I recommendtape trading over buying bootlegs for way too many reasons! To thatextent, I began to hypertext the list of known concert dates that wascompiled by Stephen Diasz and Nancy Everson. I finally made the listsearchable so that those of us that want to find particular songs cando a quick search for all of the dates the band performed "a forest" or"faith", and from there, begin our hunt for those precious jewels whererobert altered the words just enough to make us wonder and say "wow".

Of course the Discography is what made it all happen, without a discograhpy, the history of the band would be left to but a few liverecordings. The discography was meticulously maintained my Nancy Eversonand again Stephen Diasz. Since I always thought it would be neat toactually search the entire catalog and find only those releases with aparticular song, the discography evolved from a very large plain textfile to the searchable index that it is today! It was not withoutthe help of people like Jason, Olivier Hartmann and Rui (the drowning man),all of whom have been incredibly helpful over the years.

I also owe a big thanks to the Cure and people like you! The people that havecontinued to add your knowledge of the band to create a place where other fans can comeand learn about all the things that they wanted to know short of where the band lives :} Especially those of you that have chosen to contributescans of new images, interviews, concert reviews, tablature, lyricinterpretations and gossip!

Lastly, let us not forget all of the other people that put togetherdynamic fan-based cure sites and scripts for their respective musicloves...craig hogan, scott szumsteg, alia rayl, craig parker, mattof Matt's Script Archives, the zone in Canada and Mike at cabinessence.com, and rolan00 at whatever site he has created thisweek! Oh yeah..of course there is the official site...so continuously updated *grin*. Oh shit...I almost forgot, Jenn and Chris of Catchfor their time and effort in producing Catch and allowing me to placeback issues on line! I am sure there are more that I have forgotten...

The Future Direction of this Site

At this point, I think that I have taken this site as far as it isgoing to go. There are so many things left to be corrected and gaps tobe filled in...I do not have the time to research them any more.Today I am adding the final touches...

Photo Gallery

Every quality picture that I know is scanned is on the site. Thereare a few lower quality pictures, but the majority of them are worthyof being viewed. In the future, any images you send to me will be upand in the index withing a day or two!

For sale/Trade/Wanted

Enough of you have asked about whether I know someone that wantsto buy something or sell something...there is now a bulleting boardfor you to post that info. I do hope it fairs well!

The list has too much mail and USENET has too little!

There is now a section for announcements...if something is happening locally, I hope that you share the information with others in an area that should leave you free of spam (usenet) and not force you into a mailing list where people like to "chat" when chat isn't what you are interested in.

Bootlegs

The bootlegs are now completely searchable as well, and I have done a few things to make the turnaround a great deal quicker from your review to my adding the new bootleg! I hope you understand that I like to review the boot reviews before they get posted...overall, I think the boot review section is an informative section because no one has been allowed to spam the site.

Discography

My pride and joy. As of today, there are only a few things that are missing as far as I know. I think Let's Go To Bed releases and some of the Wild Mood Swings singles. If you have the info, pleasepass it on!

There is probably more, but my fingers are getting tired! Anyway, the final words from me I guess... this site is dead. Unless you provideme with more info, it is highly unlikely that I will continue to updateit! It is my hope that more people will add to the site so that therecan be one major source of quality information, unless the official site does something majestic. *note: the revamped site is very nice,still not what i want, but for most people, it is devine* Thank you for the past three and a half years, it has been fun!